SILOS, ENSILAGE AND SILAGE. 87 



very few longer cuts are mentioned. The size of the 

 stalks may be taken into account in deciding upon the 

 length of cut it will be desirable to make. With small 

 stalks a longer cut may be admissible, but there appears 

 to be no good reason for making a shorter cut than one- 

 half inch, under any conditions. It is perhaps not 

 necessary to cut the fodder for ensilage as short as may 

 be advisable with dry fodder. 



Until within a few years past there has been a prevail- 

 ing notion that a silo must be rapidly filled, in a single 

 day if possible, and that a large expenditure of labor was 

 required in treading and packing the fodder as it was 

 put in, and to make assurance doubly sure, even horses 

 and mules have been used to tramp down the fodder as 

 the silo was being filled. The next assumed element of 

 success was to put on a tight cover of planks as soon as 

 the silo was full, and load it with heavy weights at the 

 rate of from 100 to 200 or more pounds per square foot. 



A better system now prevails, and these expensive 

 details which were believed to be of paramount import- 

 ance in the ensilage of green fodder, are known to be 

 useless expenditures of labor. 



Several years ago, after making a series of experiments 

 on the thermal death-point * of the bacteria of fermenta- 

 tion, I ventured to make the suggestion that the rapid 

 filling and packing of the silo was unnecessary, and that 

 with slow filling, without treading down the fodder, the 

 temperature of the mass would rise to a point that is 

 fatal to the bacteria that cause the acid fermentations, 

 and that " sweet ensilage" might thus be made. These 

 statements were made in lectures at several different 

 places, and I was informed by a number of persons, that 

 they could now understand the results of their experience 

 the preceding year, as they had unintentionally made 

 sweet ensilage of superior quality, as the result of acci- 



* For the relations of temperature to the activities of bacteria see pp. 60-61. 



